A headlong leap into music, history, and composing

Tag Archives: Dufay

Last week, I was off doing what I call “saturation genealogy.” That’s where I immerse myself in research until I can’t absorb any more names, dates, places, lineages..lots of work, but fun too as new discoveries are made.

I know, fun summer vacation, right?

Anyway, somewhere along the way I found a family tree that someone else had created that would seem to indicate that an ancestor of my spouse was at the Battle of Agincourt (on the French side). That will have to be investigated further, but it got me to thinking about what sort of secular music those folks might have been listening to.

If you’re in the mood for more Medieval music, there are a number of extended playlists available online, including the interestingly-named “Medieval Music – ‘Hardcore’ Party Mix” full of lively dance tunes.

Like this:

When you hear the word parody, you may think of a satirical treatment of serious material. That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing one might hear in a church.

But in the case of a parody mass, it’s ok (most of the time—I’ll tell you about the exception in a bit). A parody mass is one which uses a secular song as the musical theme for the setting of the words of the mass. It has nothing to do with a satirical parody. It was a technique that was widely used in the 16th century. It is sometimes called an imitation mass.

Of course one should probably be selective in one’s choices for mass themes.

Orlando di Lasso (Orlande de Lassus) wrote a mass now known as the Missa Entre vous filles. Here’s the problem. In the song Entre vous filles de quinze ans (written by Jacobus Clemens non Papa), fifteen-year-old girls are advised not to go to the fountains because they are distracting. Clemens non Papa is rather specific about what is distracting about them. You can imagine that some people were not too happy when they found out where the mass theme came from.

The use of the parody mass dwindled, but the musical intermingling of sacred and secular has continued. Martin Luther used folk tunes for chorales. Classical themes have been used for hymn tunes and given new words.